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Churched Ibiza: Evangelical Christianity and Club Culture

2006; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 7; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01438300600625564

0143-8301

Stella Sai-Chun Lau,

Musicology and Musical Analysis

Abstract This article investigates the relationship between club culture and Evangelical Christianity based on a case study of a Christian mission, 24-7 Mission conducted on Ibiza, 'the Mecca of house music and club culture' (Osborne, 1999 Osborne, B. 1999. The A–Z of club culture, London: Hodder and Stoughton. [Google Scholar]:145) in the summer of 2003. Drawing on fieldwork research undertaken on Ibiza, this article interrogates how a Christian youth group engages with club culture. The paper will adopt an ethnographic approach which allows 'a "microsociological" focus upon the beliefs, values, rituals and general patterns of behaviour underlying social relationships or networks' (Cohen, 1993 Cohen, S. 1993. "Ethnography and popular music studies". In Popular Music, Vol. 12, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 2 [Google Scholar]: 123). A key issue to be interrogated is the contested notion of spirituality in electronic dance music. My analysis will be concentrated on members of the 24-7 mission team and the ways in which spirituality and dance music are discussed, leading to arguments about how members appraise and use popular music within their 'ministry'. By looking at different notions of religious and musical 'community', I am going to investigate the cross-over between the ways that the mission team discuss spirituality, 'community' in relation to music and the mystification of the music by clubbers. Keywords: spiritualitycommunityEvangelical Christianityclub culturesubcultural capitalworshipevangelism Notes 1. For the history, background and principles of the organisation, refer to its official website (http://www.24–7prayer.com). 2. Although the mission team members I interviewed on the island claimed dance music is a route for them to encounter God, they entered this ritual transcendent state without the use of drugs while clubbing. In fact, refraining from drugs is a way they differentiate themselves from the secular club culture on the island, practicing abstinence as a means to accentuate their Christian identity. Asked to compare and contrast a Christian mission team member and a member of the wider clubbing community, a core leader stated that people in DC10—a popular club that is well known for its capacity to draw heavy drug-users on Ibiza—'were surprised that I didn't take drugs and yet people looked at me as a part of their community' (James, 24 years old). 3. Chill-out music is a type of electronic music with an ambient vibe; this type of music has no or few lyrics. 4. A concept inspired by Maffesoli's concept of 'neo-tribes' (1988 Maffesoli, M. 1988. Jeux de masques: Postmodern tribalism. Design Issues, 4(1–2): 141–51. (special issue)[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 148) as opposed to relatively fixed subcultures. 5. NGM stands for New Generation Mission and Music. It is a Christian organisation that aims at using music with popular idioms (e.g. pop/rock, dance, etc.) as a tool to connect with non-Christians and thus facilitate the goal of conversion. 6. Partridge (1999 Partidge, C. 1999. Truth, authority and epistemological individualism in New Age thought. Journal of Contemporary Religion, 14(1): 77–95. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) suggests that an emphasis on 'the self', which is understood as 'a powerful meta-narrative of a kind which stands in sharp contrast to the 'de-centred' self theorised by advocates of the postmodern tradition' (Heelas 1993 Heelas, P. 1993. The New age in cultural context: The premodern, the modern and the postmodern. Religion, 23: 103–16. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 110), is as ancient as the Upanishads and can be found in the modern period in Romantic thought. Romantics argued that reality can be known by emphasising human intuition and imagination apart from the application of human reason. This high view of the self that is manifest in the stress on personal intuition, feeling and imagination can also be found in New Age thought. 7. Heelas elaborates upon the vitality of faith in the self, the human and the natural by citing John Wolffe's survey on religion/spirituality both within and without church and chapel: 'it could be that a characteristic feature of twenty-first-century religion will be a change in the position of Christianity from the normative expression of religion in Britain to a position of prominence but not necessarily of dominance within a much more varied range of religious options' (Wolffe 1993 Wolffe, J., ed. 1993. The growth of religious diversity: Britain from 1945, London: Hodder & Stoughton. [Google Scholar], 341, cited in Heelas 2000 Heelas, P. 2000. "Expressive spirituality and humanistic expressivism: sources of significance beyond church and chapel". In Beyond new age: Exploring alternative spirituality, Edited by: Sutcliffe, S. and Bowan, M. 237–54. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. [Google Scholar], 252). 8. 'Club culture', according to Thornton, is not a unitary culture but a cluster of taste cultures where crowds gather on the basis of their shared tastes in music, their consumption of common media and their preference for people with similar tastes to themselves. She also argues that participation in club cultures can establish further affinities, developing knowledge of the likes and dislikes, meanings and values of the culture. Therefore, 'clubs and raves house ad hoc communities with fluid boundaries that may come together and dissolve in a single summer or endure for several years' (Thornton 1997 Thornton, S. 1997. "The social logic of subcultural capital". In The subcultures reader, Edited by: Gelder, K. and Thornton, S. 200–12. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar], 200).